As many of you know, I’ve been tracking auction results for years. I’ve now accumulated a listing of over 31,000 auction results, including those from eBay, the CC>CC club auctions, the Chip Chat auctions of from Boss, Markman, Laudau, and Zaslawski collections, and others. The list includes guide book numbers, descriptions, conditions, and in some instances, buyer and seller information.

Although I had initially not intended for this listing to be made available to the public, several of my friends in the hobby have seen the list and have asked to buy a copy. Admittedly they all fall within the ranks of high-end collectors, but they’ve all told me they’ve gotten a lot of use out of it, used it to save lots of money in negotiating deals, and have been after me for updates. Up until now, I hadn’t given much thought to an update process, but I’ve come up with a price structure, which I’ll give here:

Purchase Price: $250 (in cash or trade) – includes CD burned with spreadsheet and a hard copy

Updates: $15 + $10/month since last purchase or update – includes only CD of complete list

Update hard copy: $10

Obviously this listing isn’t necessarily for everyone, but in some ways it’s more valuable than the traditional price guides. One major benefit this list has over the price guides might be in determining the availability of a chip… it may be the case with two equally-valued chips that for one of them, one or two dealers might hold the entire stock, while for the other they might be entirely tied up in collections. As an example, let’s say that you’re strolling around the convention floor and you have two “M”-rated chips that you’re looking to buy. You consult your auction list and see that one of them has had 15 completed auctions in the last year averaging $70, while the other is never seen on eBay. This should be an indication that the first chip is “out there” and available, while the second chip is probably, for the most part, tucked away in collections. This might give you the inspiration to do some price shopping for the first chip and snap up the second one, if you can locate it, for the asking price. Many other inferences can be made by taking a look at the auction “market” rather than just the price guides.

On one hand, I wouldn’t want to misrepresent that this list is illustrative of the overall market for a given chip, but on the other, I do feel that the auction market (or lack of one) can be very useful in determining what you are willing to pay for a given chip.

If any previous buyers are interested in updates (I’ve added close to 8,000 auction results since last year’s convention), or if anyone else in interested in purchasing a copy of the list and would like to have it personally delivered by me at the convention, feel free to e-mail me.